On Monday, Dictionary.com announced its 2016 word of the year. It’s “xenophobia.”

The beer industry doesn’t announce a word of the year, obviously, but those who follow the business could make a strong case for “competition.”

In line with my bet for last year’s word, “consolidation,” the pace of U.S. brewery mergers accelerated in 2015 to rates we hadn’t seen since the 1990s or further back to the great brewery contraction of the mid-20th century. 2015’s consolidation craze overflowed into 2016 and morphed into new forms of merger and acquisition activity that reflect how the industry is preparing to react to a tense and potentially combative future. What exactly is the acute competitive threat facing today’s craft suppliers? Craft beer/sake/Kombucha breweries/cideries/meaderies opening at a rate of more than two per day, mega brewers stopping at nothing to preserve the market share they’re losing to craft beer and wine and spirits, and declining rates of craft beer growth that leave sales teams guessing at how to break through to the masses who’ve stubbornly resisted craft’s guiles.

According to an unnamed BBD source, the transaction was precipitated by the sale of San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing and Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing, both distributed by Bella Vista, to breweries that have distribution contracts with Origlio. Last year, Ballast Point sold to Constellation Brands, whose primary subsidiary, Corona, is an Origlio supplier, and earlier this year Cigar City agreed to a purchase by a group led by Colorado-based Oskar Blues Brewery, also an Origlio supplier. Though laws differ state to state, most – including Pennsylvania -- require breweries to sign exclusive binding contracts with just one wholesaler per geographic territory.

According to the source, both Ballast Point and Cigar City wanted to join their parent/sibling company at Origlio but couldn’t necessarily get out of their contract with Bella Vista. Though brewery/distributor agreements do vary, most stay in place for life unless the distributor wants to dump the brewery or commits some sort of contract violation -- or the brewery or parent company pays an enormous sum to escape. Constellation and/or Origlio may have offered to buy Ballast Point from Bella Vista. But because the brewery reportedly comprises between 40%-50% of Bella’s revenue, the independent wholesaler agreed to liquidate its holdings for an undisclosed amount instead of simply selling or trading the breweries.